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Parker rubbed his thumb along my ring, his gift from a time when nobody else existed but us. “I’m incapable of that, Butterfly.” He painfully paused, his words falling down to our silver reflection. Didn’t he realize that I always carried him with me, not only in my heart, but on my finger?
“It’s ok…” I whispered. “Everything is ok, Rattlesnake…”
“It’s not,” he silently admitted. “It’ll never be ok without you.”
Camilla straightened up, her face wet, her lips sucked in with rage. “Let them go,” she whimpered. “Let her figure it out on her own.”
Parker stepped back asAlejandro reached for my hand, stopping the approaching staff members with a measurable glare.
“We need to leave,” Alejandro directed, as everyone silently watched us.
There was nothing I could say, nothing I could feel other than regret for everything Parker said. I could never envision saying goodbye, but if I did, I imagined it in the somber way that finally came out of my mouth. No nicknames, no I love you. I shut my eyes and quietly fell apart, staring back with the final opportunity to see his face.
“Goodnight… Parker.”
Chapter9
Alejandro
“Goddamn it.” Gemma cursed to herself, her body bound to the leather seat as we pulled away into traffic. Her hands were shaking, crazed since the moment I slammed the car door.
“You’re ok,” I comforted. She had every sense to be shocked, treated like the object of disgruntled men. I hated that I was a part of that, a participant in the most gross resemblance of where we came from: a place of arguing, anger, jealously.
I reached over her waist, securing her belt with a click. Her arms stayed glued to her sides, her knees clamped together like a vice.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen. I just lost control, and everything spiraled.”
“None of that was your fault.” I tried redirecting her attention, but she stared everywhere but at me: at her hands, the windows, the floor. “You did what you had to. You stayed afloat.”
“That wasn’t staying afloat, Alejandro. That was wrong. I can admit that.”
“Admit what? That you’re accountable for another’s actions? Don’t do that. This wasn’t because of you.”
“It wasonlybecause of me,” she argued. “I’m the reason we’re here; for the yelling, the shoving.” Gemma’s frown appeared exaggerated, magnified by the passing shadows that eclipsed her beautiful face.
Each street we passed was a new set of lights, an ornate secretion of colors that highlighted the threatened tears in her eyes. As much as I wanted to console her, I couldn't, because the panic she had needed to be felt, it needed to be expelled.
My goal to push Parker, to break his facade, was horribly botched, and in the backlash, I was nearly destroyed. How could I ever tell the truth after what he said? He knew Gemma, had history with her, and the horror on his face was as startling as the strength he used to shove me against the wall. What if Gemma knew my secrets, what if she confirmed everything Sergeant Fields and Parker warned me of, that she’d fucking run if she knew the monster I was?
“I hate how I feel.” Gemma formed her hands into claws, grasping at an imaginary ball. “I threw a drink at Camilla. I...” she stammered, tripping over her emotions, “I…threw…a… drink… at…Camilla…”
“She deserved it.”
Gemma finally looked up, angry that I’d even suggest that. “She didn’t, and I don’t deserve to do that to myself either. I feel bottled up and shaken, like everything inside is just brimming to the top of some un-poppable cap. And I don’t like that. I don’t like that I feel—”
“Bad?” I asked, warning her not to say it. She was anything but, and the possible guilt she felt angered me. Gemma’s eyes magnified into globes, my single word igniting her truth.
“Yes!” she admitted. “I hate it. It’s in me, and it’s rotten, and it stems from holding everything in and never speaking my truth. No matter how big or little it could be, it just sits there, swollen like a seed that never sprouts, and as much as I hate it, I always hold onto it, because that’s who I am, and it’s better than the alternative.” She latched onto her seatbelt, twisting it in her hand. She was doing it again, suffering silently, enacting the same sense of concealed shock I noticed the first moment I laid eyes on her.
“Fuck that,” I dismissed. “There are a lot of people who are bad, Gemma, but you don’t get to call yourself that. Not with me around.”
“What? You want to control my feelings too?” Her accusation stung. I wanted to reach out, to grab that auburn hair of hers, and yank it into a position to be heard.
“I won’t control you, I’ll break you,” I threatened, knuckling the leather seat by her thigh. “Fear of the unknown is just fear of being seen, which is exactly what I do to you.”
“And maybe you do it too much.”
“You’ve already decided on what’s easier,” I reached towards the nape of her neck in the darkness of the car, and I didn’t care that it startled her, because I liked it; the way she pulled her hands to her chest made her look as vulnerable as I desired. “You’re committed to a routine that you feel you deserve, and you reinforce that every time you accept the idea that you’re undeserving of something good.”
